The Summer Monster

I want to start off by saying I am now 21 and this is still happening, this is something that has been going on during the summer since before I was born but started getting bad when I was in summer vacation in middle school.

For more help to picture this, I live in mid-Michigan, not the drug and gun find parts, although I do live very close to a few hot spots. No, I live in the rural part. The part of Michigan that’s flat farmland with large patches of forests, where the DNR is constantly receiving stories of strange animals. The latest is an out of place big cat, er, cats I should say. Both jaguars and Panthers.

That’s not what I want to talk about though, I wish it was although I think this is way more interesting.

Starting since I was around the mid-90’s or so, something comes around every summer. Just, stalking the roads and forests.

My first encounter was in fifth grade, before then I was always really sick as a kid so I was never outside much.

But as I got older and stronger I started fairing much easier with the outside world. On my parents house we have tons of feral cats, close to a dozen on average, and of course they have kittens. At the time I had a big collie named Barney, who has sadly passed away since this incident.

See, Barney liked to cuddle the kittens regardless of their age, meaning the kittens would go into shock being stolen from their mom by this giant ball of love. We would have to go outside and take the kittens from the poor dog and give them back to their moms, this was usually easy. Well, up until this summer I never noticed much of a problem at least.

I went outside our house and started to look for the cats. I got around to the back of our house by our barn, around a hundred feet or so I could hear snapping. Not like, twigs snapping, but cornstalks. I looked up past our barn to the field by my house and saw this huge black shadow, clearly heavily covered in matted fur, tearing through the field towards me. I was frozen, I’ve never seen this before, I mean, I’ve watched spooky shows and been into cryptozoology my whole life, but nothing gets you ready for something like that.

Once fear kicked in and I decided to make a break for it, I ran for the house, grabbing a hot grill to try and make a path. By the time I got inside my parents were terrified, they knew I saw something and tried to console me.

See, they knew I saw something because a large unknown animal attacked my mom while she was outside one summer back in the 90’s, back when it first started showing up. She said she ran inside after feeling a bad guy feeling, only to have a giant animal try breaking down the front door.

My neighbors had also seen it, one of whom took off after it with a .44 and tried to shoot it to no avail after it got too close to his house with his young kids.

Fast forward around a week or two later, me and my mom both go back outside, same deal, missing kittens with the big cuddle bug, that whole thing.

This time we barely made it out the back door.

My flashlight went past our barn towards the woods behind my house, a neighbor had an old derelict truck and, horrifyingly, something was standing by it. I mean standing too, like, it was taller than the top of the truck. I just remember this horrifying rocking motion as it watched up, and these giant glowing eyes. I don’t remember much about color, I wanna say red or orange, but that was so long ago and I was too scared to look more.

My mom rushed me back inside and we quickly locked the door, making sure we could out as much space us and that thing as possible.

Now, I’m an adult now and this thing is still around. I used to have a room upstairs in my house, now I sleep in the basement, one big factor for the move was because some nights I could hear crunching of pebbles outside. Then slow breathing and shallow growls as something stood right by my window.

Then, you’d hear these screams from the woods. Something that still freaks me out to hear. Almost like a kid screaming but throw in some bass and then make that as feral sounding as you could. It always gets all the dogs in the neighborhood barking, even though none of us are too close to each other.

Also, one big thing I started really paying attention to, is a smell. Whenever it comes around it smells like rotten lettuce and a dead possum. This gross waft of it will come far before the thing shows up.

One of my more recent encounters happened with an ex. She was a skeptic and didn’t believe in much, but coming to my house for one evening steered her the opposite way.

We walked past my barn to go see if we could see raccoons. We have a mulberry tree, an apple tree, and a bunch of small sheds in the backyard past the barn. One shed always made me creeped out, rght back by that truck I mentioned earlier.

We got around ten feet from that shed, and without a warning this loud roar poured out from behind it. I hit the ground and she took off running. Once I got back up I booked it for my house, never looking back.

Since then it’s come around a few more times, it’s stomped loudly at me, I’ve heard more screams, I’ve ever found a lot of torn up deer and large broken trees behind my house in those woods. I know wildlife, I took a class on Michigan wildlife, but this isn’t anything I’ve met before. I carry guns at all time, either a 9mm handgun or a 7.62 rifle, just in case. It isn’t scared of humans and I don’t want to risk it.

I’ve came across cool stuff with it before, I got to talk to Linda Godfrey, THE Linda Godfrey who first reported the beast of Bray road, about it. She suggested it was a Sasquatch and not a werewolf like most of my friends think.

One of my favorite things I have got to do because of it though? That was cast a footprint and take a photo. I still have both as photos on my phone, which I’ll try my best to upload, if not I’ll figure out a way to get them to you guys. But, due to both, even the DNR is at a loss with my photos, they can’t figure out what they show.

So, there you go, that’s my whole story. Sorry for it being all over the place, but with it not being on story it was hard to focus. Just remember to be careful outside, it might be really dangerous and you wouldn’t even know it. You might have an unknown animal creeping around after all